Men love games because they can't help it
THERE WAS A TIME when men ruled the world. Not the home, mind you, but great swathes of territory taken by force and cunning and a large amount of treachery. Soldiers marched in armies led by these men, reveling in all that rape and pillage, but not so much in the parts involving having their legs lopped off and goolies impaled. And was it enough? Nope. There was always more land and peoples to conquer, mead to be drained and whoring to be done. OK, not for everybody, but you get the basic medieval male fantasy life I’m portraying here. After all that, the prospect of digging sewage trenches and begging for alms tends to lose its appeal.
And within the brains of those men - the fantasy fighting blokes immune to serious battle injuries and Olympic stallions with the wenches - the part associated with feelings of ‘reward’ was working overtime because all that conquering meant they felt very good about themselves indeed.
Shoot forward a few thousand years and what victories do we celebrate? Shouting at Match of the Day on the telly in a pub, beating your fat mate who smokes at squash, running for the bus without having a coronary and nipping ahead of that ‘tosser’ in the Aston Martin in your crappy Ford Fiesta during the rush hour commute. Heady stuff indeed.
The fact is, our rewards are less grand these days and the associated feelings we get from achieving something diminished because, well, it’s just not as risky nowadays. You risk less, you feel less. You’re hardly going to feel like a God for snatching that last ‘King Prawns On Four-Seed Granary Bap’ during the M&S lunchtime rush, now are you? Maybe you do.
You will though if you play computer games. And you’re a bloke. Men that play games more than occasionally know that for every skull they crush, trap they overcome and city they nuke, there’s a great big rush of prancing, dancing reward hormones. Is it primeval bloodlust? Is it harmless fun? Is it going to nuke your relationship? Probably all of the above. Women say it’s timewasting and that their partners are being cruel and insensitive by ignoring them for games. This conversation happens just before they make you rejoin The Great Big Herd Of Sad Single Bastards. In many ways they are right but do you know what? It’s not all men’s fault. It’s our brains you see. Honest.
This week, boffins released the first results of tests that tracked the neural processes that occur in men and women when they play games. Using scanning equipment, they tracked what happens in the brains reward and addiction spot – the mesocorticolimbic center, no less – when men and women played a simple game. The results showed that the mesocorticolimbic centre was a lot more activated in men’s brains and that the level of activity correlated to how well they were doing in the game. In other words, the reward room was lit up like an exploding star. The more territory they controlled in the game the more happy, ‘well-done’ feelings that washed over them.
Writing in a recent Journal of Psychiatric Research, Allan Reiss at Stanford University’s School For Medicine said: “These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become 'hooked' on video games than females.” Reiss was not all that surprised either: “I think it's fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species—they're the males.” It’s also no surprise then that most of the games played by men include territory control and aggression.
Of course, there are many ways of interpreting the results, including that women have more control over external stimuli, are not distracted by stupid, childish games and are sensitive and well-balanced enough not to revel in ‘blowing things up’. However, that’s missing the point.
This proves that men’s gaming addiction is actually a brain-related problem. It’s medical, which means it’s not entirely our fault. In fact, our brains are hard-wired to respond in this way. Like a females in-built cravings for Ben & Jerry’s and chocolate, just transferred to high-caliber weapons and tanks. We finally have an excuse. A proper one too. All men should have this data to hand the next time they get it in the neck for conquering the universe - from their basements. It should be in a place of importance, like on the fridge, right next to the shopping list. In fact, I’ll tell my missus right now.
“Honey, I’m not being cruel. All these years of gaming through the night and ignoring your needs, it’s not my fault. It’s medical. See, they have proof. I have a condition.
Honey?
That’s weird, why’s the back door open? Where are the kids? Why are there suitcases in the hall? Is that a car pulling away? What’s going on?
Oh, there’s a note on the fridge…” µ
Share this:
Share
This is of top priority.

I'll be printing this out and asking my wife to read it and I'll get her to sign it to say she understands it.

Well I can hope?
Womens greatest mystery solved... Man have medical condition. Is there a medicine?
After reading this article ... I get it ... its not my fault...yayyyyyyyy
When a person has no consciousness or awareness of how he [masculine for brevity] is “constructed”, his true infrastructure, he can become anything that his psyche/universe [his 3 minds] finds comfort in. As such, those seeking the truth must have some sense of the absolute or else he’ll fall into the depths that are the “relativities”. Every aspect has an absolute and a relative position.That which is absolute is not subject to interpretation whereas that which is relative is all about interpretation.

The moment a helicopter lifts off, it starts teetering and has to rely on the mechanics and aerodynamics of its blades to relocate its reference point within its plane of stability. The minute a human being starts interacting with his environment, to relocate his universe, he starts judging/comparing. He does this through his 5 fundamental senses via his left & right sympathetic nervous systems [L&R SNS, the 3 minds of a human], and even though his brain has full [2-way] communication with his other/higher nervous systems, namely the parasympathetic, central, autonomous, etc, the 5-sensed human has no direct control or access to these systems. This is because in order for humans to relocate their reference point, they have to experienced and learn from errors. Without a “devil”, you will not know if there is a “god”. The human who never make mistakes or seldom learns from his mistakes, becomes an idiot or a lunatic. He has no absolute reference points but plenty of relative rights & wrongs. The 3 human minds are comparators of relative errors, not absolute errors. When he is cheated, he seeks revenge by doing the same to others. When he thinks he has found “god”, he preaches and demands the same servitude from others. Witness “blow-em-uppers”, Armageddonites, popes, immans, sciento-cryptos and more.

As the helicopter starts veering towards one direction, its “brain” computes its position in relation to pre-established stable points and using the resultant error computed, the machine is brought back towards stability. The reference points for computing errors for a human is his femininity [disposition for lunacy/subtlety/LSNS] & his masculinity [disposition for idiocy/cruelty/RSNS] and we “bounce” between these 2 channels of instabilities to re-establish balance. When a person consumes, say, too much carbs/sugar [or hydrogen combustion], the resultant “error analysis”/comparator will give him an inkling for protein/salt [or oxygen combustion]. When a person beats, say, another [maculinity/cruelty], he feels guilt [femininity/subtlety] and then tries to make amends. But some, be they idotics or lunatics, go all the way for gold. They won’t stop until their nervous systems go AWOL and start limiting the damage to re-establish balance. Errors are for learning and relinquishing through witnessing and not for keeping through reacting [for or against]. Not learning from errors is addiction and humans are addicted to hypocrisy because they do not what or why they are born for, regardless of their beliefs and experiences so long as they have no absolute reference to base their psyche on.

All humans have a feminine, emotional side [LSNS], and a masculine side [RSNS] which has 2 realms, a physical realm and an intellectual realm. As such, the physical realm, which decides whether we are physically male or female, is only one-third of our complete gender psyche. The physiologic [hormonal, etc] predisposition aside, every human can be biased towards femininuty or masculinity. Hence gender “confusions”. Human gene sequencing is as varied and as dynamic as a moment and is never static. You want to engage in physical and intellectual activities, you’ll become more masculine as the body prepares for the psyche bias. You want to pine for that romantic moment and feel sympathetic towards tree-stumps and that cute puddy-tat [killing birds, yes], the body prepares for the task ahead.For any female who wants to feel horny quickly, get those testerone going, babe, and not so much candle-light dinners.

Those who desire purity, meaning peace and satisfaction [and sexual satisfaction based on masculinity & femininity are only temporary because the desire is impure/biased, being fetish based and not procreation based], have their masculinity and femninity complemented. In that mode, when done often enough, reality will be able to reach you for truth cannot be owned [meaning achieved through reading, seeking, etc], it has to be gifted. The 3 minds, when “over-developed”, covers the whole limbic area as ego and conditionings. The more masculine activity we conduct, the more egoistical we become and the more emotional we are, the more conditioned we become. Without exception.
A few minutes ago I was seeking my xbox controller hidden by my wife. It was in my own stuff, which she sees as 'a big mess of wires, screwdrivers and broken plastic things'. How unfair.
I think you really have to look at the type of games and the audience they are aimed at though. This industry has been built upon a focus of young males and that is why so many more play than their counterparts.

Take a game like The Sims. Its audience is very diverse. Why....? 
The target audience....

Nintendogs..... is the same with probably a lot more women playing it, then the brain training game is also aimed at a diverse audience... etc... 

This is all changing because the market is changing and girls can get just as enticed (and in some cases probably more)......
I read the INQ every day and this is one of the most interesting (and amusing) articles I have read in months. Keep up the sillyness kids. I'm gonna go play Team Fortress 2! Oh the exhilaration!
...at least one game, Tetris, seems to be quite popular with women. Did they look at brain activity while men and women were playing this?
Looove that article. I have saved it on my disk for archiving and perusal for my great-great grandchildren. This is knowledge of the highest importance that must be transmitted from generation to generation.
In fact, this just might become the cornerstone of the 21st-century civilization.

It is that important.
I'm so thought about doing the same as you are going to do, Stuart.
...I doubt she'll sign it, tho.
But I will definitly show this to her and hope she'll understand I have a medical condition... and hope.

Author of this article appears to combine several different sources of data and

present his own interpretations on each. He states that clearly there are many ways

to interpret results and he promptly proposes his own conclusions.

From a female perspective some of his views appear almost insulting, suggesting

that female brain does not react equally, as if male counterpart was more prone to being

result oriented and target driven.



To suggest that a male brain reacts differently while the owner enjoys a round of 'Kings quest'

due it's pre-historic stimuli of burning villages and raping and pillaging is beyond feministic allusions.

I would suggest the writer has a hidden animosity towards electronic gaming which I deduct by

his usage of the word 'stupid' when referring to computer games. Perhaps Mr. Lynch used to

be a gamer once but never reached a success pinnacle. Or perhaps being beaten online repeatedly

by a 14 year old bloke from Australia bent his competitive ambitions. 



Maybe I’m completely wrong and Mr. Lynch never played any electronic games and due to the

fact that his ancestors were repeatedly raped, conquered and bashed by a neighboring tribes;

reliving such horrors is simply a medical condition which Mr. Lynch unfortunately suffers from.

This would explain his simplistic summarization of male brain activity during the act of electronic

gaming.



The supportive link points to an article which after removing some fat simply suggests

again what is reinvented several times each year by expensive medical and scientific studies:

and that is that man and women are different. Whoa. Really? Really!



Will male brain react differently from female when it is subjected to watching a live birth of

a baby cow? Probably. I’m certain my brain reacts quiet differently than my wife’s when I

am asked to sweep the kitchen floor. I am also quiet certain it's not because of a medical

condition. Perhaps if the broom was in the shape of a spear and my wife didn't object to me

staking claim to the 'Kitchen' kingdom once swept... 



Man and woman are different, thus my conclusion that their brain reactions will quiet differ

in almost all we do. I do say that this conclusion was managed without any study nor

exhaustive data collection. My '2-cents' Mr. Lynch, got a run I’m on the last level of FAR-CRY,

a shoot them up computer game…

pete prokop
If it is such a medical condition, then maybe you should all consider getting it treated as to many families are breaking up over this so called medical condition.